Abstract

This historical, philological, and philosophical investigation analyzes Aristotle's concept of rhetorical ethos. By collation and analysis of the occurrences of the term $\\eta\theta o\varsigma$ in the Greek text of Aristotle's works and the recontextualization of the Rhetoric within Aristotle's philosophy of the good society, the nature of mankind, and the nature of truth, Aristotle's meaning of ethos as moral character is reconstructed and contrasted with modern concepts of ethos as image-of-credibility. ;Part One surveys modern ethos research segregated into rhetorical, philosophical, and empirical studies. The survey reveals a semantic shift in both terminology and meaning in modern speech communication notions of ethos: from $\\eta\theta o\varsigma$ to $\acute\epsilon\theta o\varsigma$; from ethos to credibility; and from credibility to image-of-credibility. It is argued that what has washed out of modern concepts of ethos is precisely what was fundamental for Aristotle, viz., ethics rooted in character. ;Part Two documents Aristotle's concept of $\\eta\theta o\varsigma$ as moral character by comparing his usage of the term in the Rhetoric against his usage in Nicomachean Ethics, and Politics. Aristotle's usage in the Rhetoric is found to be uniform with his general moral philosophy as regards the good man and the good for mankind. ;Part Three seeks a way to get Aristotle's concept of ethos back into modern rhetoric. Baselines are drawn for a teleological ethics of communication built on the nature of humans as Homo narrans in which humans are at the heart of evolution; language is at the heart of humanness; story is at the heart of language; character is at the heart of story; and moral value is at the heart of character. Moral discourse involves actualizing our potential as narrator of the story of the meaning of life by recapitulating in symbolic action evolution's trajectory from meaninglessness to meaningfulness. Virtue here means well-doing in terms of quality storytelling that owns its bondmanship to the three realities of nature, culture, and self. Character emerges as the pivotal quality of settled disposition toward noble situational harmony between the three worlds of our communion